Two years ago, almost to the day, I became a member of the Socialist Party of England and Wales. I had found out about the party when searching online for socialist groups in my local area and discovered that not only was there a branch of the Socialist Party in my local town, but they held meetings there every Wednesday. So I decided to go along to the next meeting. And I’m glad I did because looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Up until then I had been feeling increasingly despondent about the way the world was heading. Israel’s genocide in Gaza had been going on for almost two years by that point, and the barrage of news and images coming from that beleaguered strip of land had sent my mental health into what felt like a terminal decline.
The reason this news was causing me such anguish was that the UK government was so obviously complicit in the slaughter. In a representative democracy, a government supposedly represents the will of the people, so technically that meant I was complicit in the slaughter too. Yet I also felt that I was powerless to do anything to stop it. It was only after I joined the Socialist Party that I began to understand that whereas I as an individual might be powerless, the class of people to which I belong – the working class – has enormous power. The working class has the power to stop the genocide in Gaza. It also has the power to completely transform society. It just needs to harness that power in the right way.
I have always been on the left of the political spectrum, but it was the financial crisis of 2008 – or more specifically, our government’s response to it – that turned me into a socialist. It was clear to me that ordinary people were being punished for a crisis they did nothing to create, whereas those who had created the crisis were getting away scot-free. This was socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else. So naturally I was heartened when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015. Sadly, many of the people I associated with at that time, whom I assumed had similar political views to me, did not share my enthusiasm for the new Labour leader. It seems some people actually want Labour to be controlled opposition to the Tories rather than a genuine left-wing party.
Fast forward four years and by the end of 2019 Labour had lost two general elections under Corbyn, who was then forced to resign. Many commentators at the time claimed that this demonstrated socialism would never be popular in Britain, but anyone paying attention could see right through this rhetoric. The truth is that Corbyn had been treated as a pariah and was eventually brought down by a completely confected ‘antisemitism crisis’ which everyone in the media-political class had gone along with. The lesson of the Corbyn era is not that socialism is unpopular; on the contrary, it is that socialists would win every election if the capitalist class and their media lackeys did not intervene to stop it from happening.
What’s particularly striking looking back at this period is that the media-political class threw everything it had at Corbyn even though he is a reformist social democrat, not a true socialist. What he was offering was basically a watered-down version of capitalism, but even that was too much for these ghouls apparently. Imagine how they would react if a genuine socialist ever got close to the levers of power! I realized that, paradoxically, the hysterical overreaction of the capitalist class to this mild-mannered reformist politician demonstrated just how tenuous its grip on power actually is. I was already convinced of the need to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism, but now I started to believe it might actually be possible.
The problem was that the election of the right-wing Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour party in 2020 had left me politically homeless. I had been member of the Labour Party but left almost immediately after Starmer’s election as I could see the way the party was going. Thankfully, four years later I joined the Socialist Party – and the rest, as they say, is history. Reflecting back on my two years in the party, I am struck by how much I have learned in such a short space of time. I may have already been a socialist when I joined the party but I had little experience of political activism. Since then I have taken part in countless paper sales, several demonstrations, and I even represented the party in the recent local elections.
The thing I like most about being in the Socialist Party is the sense of camaraderie. It is so refreshing being around people who not only understand the problems with capitalism but are actually motivated to do something about them. Many people complain about the existing system but few seem willing to do anything about it. I think this stems from the widely-held view that nothing can, in fact, be done about it. Not only is this view mistaken; it is a gift to the ruling class. As already noted, the working class has the power to completely transform society. However, as Lenin argued in his 1902 work What is to be Done?, it might need some guidance to enable it to do that. The role of the Socialist Party is to provide this guidance, raise class consciousness, and unlock the full potential of the working class.
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